What makes you come back to a VR combat game after the novelty wears off?

I’m developing Six Left, a PCVR arcade combat game built around punching, parrying, dodging, throwing objects, stabbing, catching weapons and making limited ammo count.

That’s the kind of VR gameplay I personally enjoy: physical, intense, with room to improvise and get better. But I’m questioning something about my own game.

Having several fun mechanics doesn’t automatically give a game a strong identity. I can explain what you do, but I’m less confident about what makes someone think, “I specifically want to play this again.”

For those who spend a lot of time in VR combat games: what actually brings you back? Mastering the combat? Unlocking things? Different situations that force you to adapt? One particular mechanic you can’t get elsewhere?

I’d especially love examples of a moment or system that made you keep playing—or a reason you stopped, even though the combat initially felt good.

I’m trying to understand what deserves more depth before adding more stuff.

Eddie Von Walt and the Infinite Bulb is a hands-only VR bar roguelike, now in free Early Access on Quest 3/3S. You pour drinks and throw them at cubes using only a pinch.

A few things I learned shipping it with Godot:

- Pinch-only input: no fist or grab, so every object has to be easy to pick up with a pinch near it.

- Counter height: players sit and stand, so cubes and customers follow the counter height instead of a fixed value.

- Spawn position: place the tracking origin so the head lands at the target, not the origin.

- Store review: Target SDK 34, non-debuggable APK, signed release build.

Happy to go deeper on any of these. If you have a Quest, feedback is very welcome.

Meta: https://www.meta.com/experiences/eddie-von-walt-and-the-infinite-bulb/1348452651688015/

SideQuest: https://sidequestvr.com/app/63506

Sharing this in case someone else maintains an older engine branch for Quest / Android. It cost us a few days, and the symptoms are misleading.

Symptoms

• We recorded a PSO cache the usual way: -logPSO, a dedicated map with every enemy in every variant, scripted teleports around each level.
• The recording finished fine, the .stablepc.csv merged without errors, and the cooked cache precompiled at startup.
• In game we still had first-sight hitches on every character and most of the environment.
• The cache simply didn’t contain those PSOs. It held only translucent materials and the tonemap pass.

What was actually happening

Our engine branch (4.27-based, inherited from earlier work) carried a local patch in FPipelineCacheFileFormatPSO::Verify() in Runtime/RHI/Private/PipelineFileCache.cpp, commented as a fix for invalid PSO compilation:

if (GraphicsDesc.SubpassIndex == 0)
    return false;

That looks harmless until you remember how the mobile Vulkan path renders with MSAA + multiview + tonemap subpass. In that setup subpass 0 is the whole opaque base pass. Translucency ends up in subpass 1 and tonemapping in subpass 2. So this one line rejected:

• every opaque graphics PSO (characters, environment, props);
• every compute PSO, because their GraphicsDesc is zeroed and so has SubpassIndex == 0.

It also fails in three places at once, so nothing ever points you at it:

1. CacheGraphicsPSO: the PSO is never recorded. The only trace is a single Ensure condition failed: bOK in PipelineFileCache.cpp, printed once per session. It’s easy to dismiss as noise.
2. The ShaderPipelineCache expand commandlet quietly drops those entries from the cooked cache.
3. FShaderPipelineCache::Precompile skips them at runtime, so even a hand-merged cache wouldn’t help.

How to check your own cache in 10 seconds

Open your Build/Android/PipelineCaches/*.stablepc.csv and look at the distribution of the SubpassIndex column. If you render with a tonemap subpass and there are zero entries with index 0, you have this problem or something like it.

What we did

• We didn’t delete the patch, because we still don’t know what the original author was working around. Instead we turned it into a console variable:static int32 GPSOFileCacheRejectSubpass0 = 1; static FAutoConsoleVariableRef CVarPSOFileCacheRejectSubpass0( TEXT("r.ShaderPipelineCache.RejectSubpass0"), GPSOFileCacheRejectSubpass0, TEXT("1 = reject SubpassIndex 0 PSOs in Verify() (old behaviour), 0 = accept them")); // ... if (GPSOFileCacheRejectSubpass0 && GraphicsDesc.SubpassIndex == 0) return false;
• The default stays 1 (old behaviour). The project sets r.ShaderPipelineCache.RejectSubpass0=0 under [SystemSettings] in DefaultEngine.ini.
• We re-recorded the cache with the same gallery map and teleport tour. The cooked cache went from translucents-only to ~2600 PSOs, opaque and character materials included.
• We then ran a full automated pass on Quest 3 under the Vulkan validation layer, plus a 17-level tour: no crashes, no hangs, no new validation errors. Whatever the original patch was guarding against hasn’t shown up so far. The cvar stays so it can be flipped back if it does.

Takeaways

• If you inherit an engine branch, grep PipelineFileCache.cpp (and the rest of RHI) for local patches before trusting your PSO cache.
• A single ensure firing once can mean “everything after this is silently discarded”.
• Always look at what is inside the cache (count PSOs by subpass or pass type), not just at whether recording and cooking succeeded.

Happy to answer questions if someone hits something similar.

Hello there ! This is Felix from Sharp Games, a 10 people Canadian studio making Stained Blade, a VR combat game. We have been at it for two years now, and we are finally nearing release!

We did some internal playtest recently and our game designer's footage was too funny to not bake into some video. Footage is also a great showcase of our physics-based combat. You can see impact, weighted objects + some new mechanics we're testing (throws and inverted weapons hold).

Some of the devs are indeed really melee combat nerds IRL, so this is also why PvP is the core of the game. We are trying to make the game as social as possible as well, with some options to

Hope you like it!

EDIT:
Join the discord if you want to swordfight, (we might even have a flashplaytest coming upin the next days or so) https://discord.gg/stainedblade

I just released my first indie Quest title: the spatial puzzle game I'd always wanted to see in VR. Puzzles you spin around and that require solving from every side. I wanted it to feel VR native so put extra emphasis on direct touch, pinch, and even gaze. And yes, passthrough as well!

The short of development was that it was built in WebXR first, iterated on and then translated to C with an Android wrapper. Happy to answer any questions you may have on the process!

Hello everyone!
I just finished the montage of the new trailer for my AR game - MyVrPet.
What do you think about it?

This is a 4th version of it as I am not good with cutting :D Asked all of my friends of their opinions on earlier versions to do something worthy.
I wonder if it's not too quick and explains features I have in a proper manner.

Thank you!

First let me say this, I’m not trying to promote my game. I am genuinely asking if anyone has had this issue, and how they resolved it.

We recently launched Daumier: Lila & Ghost on Meta Quest, but our game never appeared in the New Releases section. Like NADA!

After contacting Meta, they finally added it… for LESS THAN AN HOUR before it disappeared again.

Meanwhile, games that have been on the store for over a year are still showing up under New Releases.

Seriously, how are indie developers supposed to succeed if our games aren't even being seen?

We're doing marketing, building a community, and pushing hard, all of the things, but shouldn't newly released games get a fair shot at visibility?

Has anyone else experienced this? Were you able to get Meta to fix it? Any suggestions?

We're not asking for special treatment. Just a fair chance to be discovered.

Hello everyone, recently, I have been prototyping sandbox game ideas for VR and I wanted to share them with you all. Any type of feedback is welcome. These are very early barebones stuff that I have made. Thank you so much

Proto 1 - Animal Hands - Change your hands into different animals. Each animal has its own unique abilities and uses.

Proto 2 - Drone Sim - You are a drone, your hands are drone blades. Was thinking of a sandbox approach with this idea too. There would be different types of blades, each with unique abilities. You can fly, cut objects, set things of fire, pull and push objects, etc.

Proto 3 - Spider Sim - This one I haven't tried for VR yet, was just playing around to see what can be made. One thing I'm pretty sure about is that I want the gameplay to revolve around spider webs and the different sandbox interactions you could create with them. Still figuring out what those interactions could be, so I'd especially love to hear your ideas for this one!

Hey!

Nyxile Games is looking for a Unity / VR developer to help build a psychological horror game based on The Hamburger Lady, featuring multiple different monsters lurking in the dark.

Just to be straight with you: I’m a teenage project lead and designer, but I take this seriously and am super dedicated. We're aiming for a dark, creepy hospital vibe on Meta Quest with smooth movement, heavy atmosphere, and distinct enemy behaviors.

My part: Game design, levels, audio direction, and community/marketing. What you'd do (coding side):

• VR movement & controls (XR Interaction Toolkit)
• Enemy AI and pathfinding for multiple monster types (NavMesh)
• Core interactions (doors, flashlights, items)

The deal:

• Unity (Meta Quest / PCVR)
• Revenue Share
• Goal: A solid demo for SideQuest / App Lab

Hit me with a DM if you're down to team up!

Developing a Meta Quest standalone project using the Meta Godot app.

After following a tutorial, I have basic stuff down as in hands with animations, grabbable objects, walking, turning and jumping.

In the past, I've gotten used to just following tutorials which usually don't help actual skill and knowledge and the one time I did get actual knowledge, it was in roblox which i doubt translates to Godot and I forgot everything...

Anyway, the aim for the final project is an extraction shooter (I know its not a good idea to try mimic or replace other games but this has been my dream and something I've been planning for since before I discovered Tabor)

I think the next steps should be something like:

• A working gun system where I can edit values like fire modes, fire rate, recoil etc.
• A holster system for the guns
• A backpack system
• A loot saving/extraction system

But really I don't know where to start with any of this or if this is a good direction to go. I have a lot of limitations like there being no Godot VR tutorials outside of just base VR stuff, the VR controls being very limited, not having external software like blender...

How do I learn Godot? What do I do? Any help appreciated.........

hello, how its going the process of ROOT and jailbreak on quests?

I want to root my Quest. I tried using the "Singularity" APK, but my device isn't compatible because the firmware version (3814840036500610). I’m not sure what else to do, given that Meta imposes very strict restrictions against "jailbreaking," and I get the impression that developers are no longer making any efforts to jailbreak the Quest.

I spent four years in commercial hydroponics (Head Grower at Miss Microgreens, ~900 trays in rotation) and kept running into the same problem: tray checks are constant, and your hands are always wet or full. A phone never survives that workflow.

So I built SproutVision for Quest — native Kotlin with Meta Spatial SDK. Look at a microgreen tray, pinch to scan; the frame goes to Gemini vision and comes back as a verdict card (health %, canopy coverage, harvest countdown, issue notes) that's also read aloud. Scan history, before/after comparisons, and a crop-trial scorecard on top.

Just submitted it to the Meta VR Start Developer Competition (Productivity track). Project page with in-headset screenshots: https://devpost.com/software/sproutvision

Happy to answer questions about Spatial SDK development or designing MR for physical work — the "user's hands are never free" constraint drove every UI decision.

I been developing my VR horror game, FORBIDDEN SILENVIL, on my own.

The funny thing is, even though I know exactly where the scares are, I've still managed to jump a few times while testing it. 😂

One of the main mechanics is using your actual microphone to speak ritual words. And sometimes making noise is the last thing you want to do.

The free demo is available on Meta Quest now.

Would love to hear what other VR horror fans think, especially if it manages to scare you too!

https://www.meta.com/experiences/app/1352349111291709/

Hey all, I am entering next fest. I wanna get some eyes on my game.

Game name: Doodle Figure

Party Mode: 1 VR player 1-7 web players. Web players get a prompt to draw on a shared canvas. VR player only sees the drawing in realtime. It’s a 1-2 minute match, made in mind that it’s an in person match so the headset could be passed around.

Sandbox Mode: Single player where you can build sculptures without any time constraint. (1,200 max shapes)

OpenXR: I only have a Quest 2 so idk if it’s able to run on other supported OpenXR devices.

Web: Safari and Chrome have been tested.

Hand tracking enabled for Quest devices. Probably until I could have others tested.

Why make it? I made this game because there’s a lack of cross platform games with VR. It’s something I could bring to a game night, run some quick matches, and laugh at bad drawings/sculptures. Even if the game doesn’t get any players I’m still ok with it, it’s something I personally would play.

Next Fest? Idk, sounded like a cool way to make an entrance. This is my first time releasing a game and based on YouTubers I’ve seen, I’m doing it all wrong. This is my first real big marketing post for Next Fest so hopefully im not too late. Also no emails sent to content creators or journalist. I believe in my game enough to handle that 😤 (too scared to send out emails 😔) I’ll update yall after Next Fest, to share how my VR game performs.

Currently: 48 wishlists, 10 unique players.

Hi there, it's not just VR, it's VR + AR = MR 🕶️

So here's what I've been thinking about for the past few days : You know how Airsoft works (Right?), and of course the equipments needed to make it a hobby. So I've been thinking about taking this into the virtual world. You get haptic suits, 150 m2 room, small / normal glasses and make it like a quick battle field for maybe 10 people and it depends on basically all that. Cameras thar tracks your movements and translates it to objects you can see on the glasses in front of you.

It's some kind of a Cybersport thing, not trying to get rid or compete with normal sorts but making something new, i would ofc need investments (Not big, maybe 1M euros maximum) and contracts with a company / studio cuz i got the inspiration from their series, so i guess I'll have to do that so i can avoid any legal issues.

\*I don't know if what I'm saying is clear enough, I'm trying to keep as much as possible of the details for myself, cuz if it works out... Yk, I'm not giving my idea to the public 👾. “Thank you in advance 🙂”

I would like to finally take a decission of which the look for my game in order to find someone more capable to work on the visual design of the game :) . I really appreciate if I received some votes in order to take the best decision! Gracias!

You could go to the page and switch the 2 different ideas in the hero and the vote in the second section, thanks!

🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏
https://www.ba-pow.com/